Energy System Concept

[David Crockett]

For the engineer types and greenies of EOK:

The discussion regarding infrastructural ‘smart grids’ seems unfounded – how can systems which mostly just transport electricity, gas, and water, produced from a remote location, be smart? Comparatively little of the investment is spent producing, in addition to other unpopular aspects of fossil energy generation, which seems to beg the question, how does this situation improve?

The following concept relates to this increasingly problematic state of affairs, where energy and water prices are rising as supplies become scarcer and more expensive to extract, most of the energy is foul (mountain-top removal and international instability?), and millions of miles of wires and pipes connect but don’t produce anything.

Pellec Power Unit

Pellet stove technology is relatively new, with a very small market share in its only market, building interior heat. Is it possible to develop a system that uses pellet technology, essentially densely compressed plant mass combusted at high temperature, in a furnace walled in water heating chambers for hot water supply, and the electricity needed by the pellet auger and water pumps generated by chamber steam supplying a small (size depends on building size/use) electricity-producing turbine, the entire system encased in a removable sound and heat barrier so the outside of the water chambers can warm (reduces pellet use) and summer isn’t unbearable, as well as full heat release in winter?

Could this system be capable of generating excess electricity? Here is the possibility of relatively cheap, unobtrusive (unlike wind/solar), and nearly clean building energy, resilient against events like terrorism and weather that threaten grids. Calling all steam turbine experts…

Thanks for your input.

[Steve Drevik]

I suspect that, once you calculate it out, the cost of fuel per kWh is going to be really high. I looked into micro gas-turbines back in 1996-1998, and the cost was about $0.22 per kWh+, or about 3x the going grid rate. I know if you run the cost for diesel generators, the cost per kw is equally high, at least $0.16 per kWh.

The trick is making use of the waste heat- GE's "home-sized" fuel cell project (Plug Power?) did this- using the waste heat from the fuel cell as a hot water heater.

[David Crockett]

You’re right – stove pellets currently cost way too much for this proposal to work. But the federal government could subsidize large-scale production of plant fiber (instead of oil and coal), even locally on open spaces, lawns (what a reversal of energy usage!), with utility companies/municipalities growing, harvesting, making, and distributing pellets to buildings, keeping costs below $0.07 per kWh.

Other benefits: plant fiber production assimilates airborne carbons, cools at ground level, provides more catastrophic-event resiliency than current system, pellet heat is more comfortable than electric, and again, less reliance on fossil fuels.